ENCOUNTER Poem by Teixeira de Pascoaes

My living encounter with the humble
Things of Nature gives birth to souls,
Divine apparitions,
Which abstractly behold me from I don't know where,
From I don't know what unfamiliar place
Outside this space
In which trees and rocks appear.

I see specters, images of Mystery,
Fantastical figures,
Glowing outlines imprinted on the dusk,
Like so many omens. . .

Outlines of pallor emerging in the distance,
And sorrows that are fading portraits
Of unknown Divinities. . .
Statues of silence and melancholy
In the solitude of the hills. . .
Sphinxian postures in the desert,
The shadows of the Pyramids in the sun,
And Plato dragging his tunic of light
Among Egypt's sad and solemn priests
Wearing vestments of dust and dead penumbras,
In temples of moonlight and petrified clouds. . .

I see before me fantastical presences,
Dreamed horizons that gird me
In a painful embrace! Dark birds that alight
On my brow, where night has fallen,
And winds that carry me through
Mists and lightning. . .
Already lost and dead, I'm no more
Than a human appearance,
Floating over the waves of emotion
That surge inside me like blood
From an open wound. . .
And I ride the waves, which spread
Over shores of snow and white foam,
In blue distances of endless clarity,
And in the nocturnal vagueness where stars
Emerge, like smiles of the devil. . .

I float on a lofty dream,
In heights of mystic splendor,
Where the white lily of moonlight opens.

I float on a lofty dream, in which I see
Myself as an indefinite being. . . The vast night,
Spreading over me its black wings,
Cannot hide me. My face,
Risen above the darkness,
Contemplates the divine Moon.